John F. Kerry is a Massachusetts senator, a D.C. VIP, a former presidential candidate and a man filled with wonkish knowledge on all sorts of topics. And while he never quite made it to the Oval Office, he gets to participate in an inauguration anyway — the inaugural edition of Answer This, POLITICO’s occasional series of interviews with leading, and would-be leading, political figures.

Q: Tell us your favorite joke.

A: On the advice of my attorney, my family and every member of my staff, I am no longer allowed to tell jokes.

Q: When’s the last time you used profanity?

A: Sh—, good question. Election Night 2004 comes to mind. Truth is, when I was a kid and my dad was stationed in Cold War Germany, even then the first foreign words I learned were swear words, so I’m embarrassed to say I have deep roots in this area.

Q: How many hours of sleep do you get (on average)?

A: A lot less than when we were in the minority in the Senate. But usually I do well with five hours. I’m able to sleep anywhere. One of the benefits of running for president for two years is you really learn how to maximize time on buses, airplanes and motels.

Q: Describe your level of ambition.

A: I’ve mellowed over the years. Teresa helped me learn to appreciate the moment. I’ve never been happier in the Senate, and there’s something liberating about chairing the Foreign Relations Committee at this time in the world, with a big majority where we’re no longer just trying to stop bad things from happening. It’s a different kind of ambition. I’m in a hurry to get done the things that got me into politics in the first place but were out of reach in recent years here.

Q: You’re president of the United States for enough time to make only one executive decision. What is it?
A: Any opposing player who sacks, tackles, touches, breathes on or looks directly at Tom Brady is declared an enemy combatant.

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Q: What’s a common and accepted practice for Americans nowadays that you think we’ll look back on with regret?

A: Up until this November, it was voting Republican.

Q: What is your favorite body part (on yourself) and why?

A: My face has been compared to New Hampshire’s “Old Man in the Mountain” (before it fell), and I’ve been called Lurch from “The Addams Family,” so there’s not a lot to choose from, but I’d have to go with my better-than-Rod-Blagojevich hair.

Q: What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?

A: Well, we already know what I’d attempt knowing I could fail. But for this, I’d say play left field for the Red Sox.

Q: On what types of products do you never go cheap, for the sake of quality?

A; Ketchup.

Q: Describe a few pet peeves of yours.

A: Beside 50,000 votes in Ohio? Probably people who don’t return phone calls. I try to always get back to people, and I tell my staff: Even if the answer is no, you’ve got to get back to people.

Q: How often do you Google yourself?

A: When I was growing up, the priests taught us to think that was a sin.

Q: What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?

A: How to give shorter speeches.

Q: What childhood event shaped or scarred you the most?

A: Seeing the differences between communism and the West up close as a kid. My father grounded me afterwards, but riding my bike into East Germany and seeing the sterile, cold buildings of the Soviets framed in a very real way the divide between our way of life and theirs.

Q: Would you rather live without music or live without TV?

A: TV.

Q; Would you rather be gossiped about or never talked about at all?

A: Never talked about at all.

Q: Think of one of your least favorite people in Washington and, without naming names, describe what makes that person so unappealing.

A: Disloyalty is the trait that burns me up.

Q; Let your mother know how much she means to you, in the form of a haiku.

A: Impossible in just 17 syllables. And trust me, up there in heaven, she knows.

Q: Bonus Round: Who would win in a street fight, Pat Buchanan or John McLaughlin?